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Mary Bryant (c. 1765 – after 1794) was a Cornish people convict sent to Australia in 1787 with the First Fleet. In 1791, she became one of the first successful escapees from the fledgling Australian penal colony alongside her husband William Bryant, their two children, and seven other transportees. Her group sailed for sixty-nine days by boat to Kupang on Timor, where they were detained by Dutch authorities and handed over to the British for trial in London. She was represented by the biographer and lawyer James Boswell, who was able to avoid the typical death penalty for such cases and sentenced to serve the remainder of her sentence in Newgate prison. She was pardoned and released in 1793 and returned to Cornwall.
William Bryant was a mariner. In early New South Wales, William was considered useful, and was put in charge of fishing. When he was caught selling fish on the side, he was given 100 lashes. Bryant's transportation order expired in March 1791. He made a plan to escape with others by boat.
Initially they kept close to the coast, and stopped to replenish their supplies of water and food as they travelled north. Their planned route involved navigating the then uncharted Great Barrier Reef and the Torres Straits. After a voyage of sixty-nine days, the group reached Kupang, on the island of Timor, a journey of more than 5,000 kilometres. This voyage has often been compared with William Bligh's similar journey in an open boat only two years earlier, after the mutiny on the Bounty.Robert Hughes, The Fatal Shore, 1987 London: Collins Harvill, page 205 Bligh's voyage had also ended in Timor.
Timor was then under the control of the Dutch. The Bryants' party claimed to be shipwreck survivors. They were later discovered and imprisoned by the Dutch governor, then handed over to Captain Edward Edwards of , which had been wrecked on the Great Barrier Reef while on a mission to capture the Bounty mutineers. They were sent back to Britain to stand trial, travelling first on a Dutch ship (the Rembang) to Jakarta in the company of survivors of Pandora, thereafter travelling from Batavia to Cape Town on the three Dutch VOC ships cf. Preston (2017); in Chapter XVIII Vredenburg, Hoornwey and Horssen (carrying Mary Bryant and her daughter Charlotte Details of voyage 8327.2 from Batavia, departed on 21-12-1791, to Cape Town, arrival 19-03-1792; Durch website, Retrieved 25 Feb 2020), arriving there on 19 March 1792, and later from Cape Town in the company of Royal Marines returning from Sydney on HMS Gorgon. During the voyage back, Mary lost William and both of her children, Emanuel and William, dying at Batavia on 1 and 22 December 1791, whilst Charlotte died on the last leg of the voyage on 6 May 1792. Morton and Bird also died, and Cox became a man overboard from the Horssen.
Mary Bryant, Allen, Broom alias John Butcher, Lillie, and Martin arrived back in England on 18 June 1792. The punishment for escaping from transportation was generally death, but following court hearings in London, they were all ordered to 'remain on their former sentence, until they should be discharged by course of law'. London Chronicle, 7–10 July 1792 Their case was taken up by the biographer and lawyer James Boswell. On 2 May 1793 Mary Bryant was pardoned, and she was released from Newgate prison, her sentence having expired, while Allen, Broom alias Butcher, Lillie, and Martin had to wait until 2 November 1793 to be released by proclamation. Bryant returned to her family in Cornwall, and Boswell provided her with £10 a year until his death in 1795.
Bryant was the subject of a British/Australian television movie The Incredible Journey of Mary Bryant, with Romola Garai playing the eponymous role, Jack Davenport and Sam Neill. It was first screened in Australia on 30 October 2005 on Network Ten as a two 2-hour part series. It was screened in the UK over Easter weekend 2006 on ITV. It was not completely historically accurate.
She also featured heavily in Timberlake Wertenbaker's play Our Country's Good, which itself was based on Thomas Keneally's novel The Playmaker. Both centre on the first Australian settlers' decision to stage a performance of The Recruiting Officer, and the action ends just at the point of Bryant's escape. In the play, she is referred to by a nickname, Dabby Bryant.
The story was fictionalised by Rosa Jordan in her novel Far From Botany Bay, by Lesley Pearse in the novel Remember Me, and by Meg Keneally in Fled.
The first chapter of the graphic novel Terra Doloris (978-2-344-00787-1, 2018) by Laurent-Frédéric Bollée and Philippe Nicloux is about Mary Bryant and her family.
The Mary Bryant story also featured in Patrick Edgeworth's play Boswell for the Defence. A huge success in London in 1989, it starred Leo McKern.
A musical titled Mary Bryant was written by Nick Enright and was presented in Melbourne by Magnormos.
Mary Bryant was the subject of a one-woman theatre show, Oh Mary!, devised and directed by Bec Applebee and Simon Harvey (Kneehigh Theatre. It toured the UK in 2011.
Paul Marsh (of the Canberra Australia group "Coolibah Coolective") composed "Sixty Six Days in an Open Boat" to tell the story of Mary and her family's journey.
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